Thanks to this vim lighting talk I’ve just discover pressing ctrl+x, ctrl+e on bash opens your favorite text editor with the command you are typing. After saving and closing your editor the command is executed on bash.

Usually I write on an UK keyboard and just change the keyboard layout when I need to type some Spanish text. This is easy and handy, just pressing alt + shift I’m able to change the layout.

Recently I’ve started to help with the translation of Perl Maven Tutorial to Spanish. Problem here is that code and Spanish text is mixed so I have to switch the layout constantly and turns out to be a nightmare. I could just type using Spanish keyboard layout but coding in general becomes tougher and Vim commands in particular become hell. (How was I able to do this for so many years?)

So I came across with some simple mappings that allow me to write most Spanish words I might need keeping the UK keyboard layout:

VIM Clutch is a hardware pedal for improved text editing speed for users of the magnificent VIM text editor (1, 2). When the pedal is pressed down, the pedal types “i” causing VIM to go into Insert Mode. When released, it types and you are back in Normal Mode.

One I really like is the Pong game, so I developed some extensions to the game. The result is MultiPong:
Which is a madness game with several balls that can collide an have gravity, hardly playable but I had some fun doing it.

Some classmates did amazing things, so here are some of the ones I like.

I’ve spent recently some time playing with the Perl module HTTP::Proxy which allows to create a proxy in a few lines of code. One interesting thing is that makes possible on live modifications of the content.

This code creates a proxy on the port 8080 and assings a filter to all html files. This filter will search for all img tags and will replace the source of the image.
If we run this script and configure our web browser to use a proxy on localhost:8080 we will start to see cats instead of some pictures.

Isn’t that great?

Well, it has some problems. To begin with I used a regex to parse the html instead of some module dedicated to it, so this code is messing around with the html and breaking some things. Nevertheless of that it will only alter the images with width and height properties defined. If the dimensions or the image are defined in css, javascript or other madness there is no simple way to know the appropriate size to get the right cat.

Because of this flaws I’ve tried another approach: tamper the image data itself and keep untouch the html code.

This works similar way but it applies a filter to all images and just change the image data for a different one. Besides, there are more things than cats. You can use something like proxy.pl apes to get:

Extra ball

Seems that managers are not like used to be, so if you miss a more classical motivation you can turn on sudo insults.

The only thing you need is edit the /etc/sudoers file (using visudo!) and add the following line:

Defaults insults

So any time we introduce a wrong password to sudo command you will get a motivational message:

david@david-sony:~$ sudo ls
[sudo] password for david:
No soap, honkie-lips.
[sudo] password for david:
Your mind just hasn't been the same since the electro-shock, has it?
[sudo] password for david:
BOB says: You seem to have forgotten your passwd, enter another!
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts

It is good, but I wanted it better ;-) Why don’t have this any time I type a wrong command?
I was able to get this list of insults from the sudo source code:

Just what do you think you're doing Dave?
It can only be attributed to human error.
That's something I cannot allow to happen.
My mind is going. I can feel it.
Sorry about this, I know it's a bit silly.
Take a stress pill and think things over.
This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
I feel much better now.
Wrong! You cheating scum!
And you call yourself a Rocket Scientist!
No soap, honkie-lips.
Where did you learn to type?
Are you on drugs?
My pet ferret can type better than you!
You type like i drive.
Do you think like you type?
Your mind just hasn't been the same since the electro-shock, has it?
Maybe if you used more than just two fingers...
BOB says: You seem to have forgotten your passwd, enter another!
stty: unknown mode: doofus
I can't hear you -- I'm using the scrambler.
The more you drive -- the dumber you get.
Listen, broccoli brains, I don't have time to listen to this trash.
Listen, burrito brains, I don't have time to listen to this trash.
I've seen penguins that can type better than that.
Have you considered trying to match wits with a rutabaga?
You speak an infinite deal of nothing
You silly, twisted boy you.
He has fallen in the water!
We'll all be murdered in our beds!
You can't come in. Our tiger has got flu
I don't wish to know that.
What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what?
You can't get the wood, you know.
You'll starve!
... and it used to be so popular...
Pauses for audience applause, not a sausage
Hold it up to the light --- not a brain in sight!
Have a gorilla...
There must be cure for it!
There's a lot of it about, you know.
You do that again and see what happens...
Ying Tong Iddle I Po
Harm can come to a young lad like that!
And with that remarks folks, the case of the Crown vs yourself was proven.
Speak English you fool --- there are no subtitles in this scene.
You gotta go owwwww!
I have been called worse.
It's only your word against mine.
I think ... err ... I think ... I think I'll go home

And I copied that list in a file called /etc/insults.txt, after that I edited the file /usr/lib/command-not-found and add the following function:

When I have to debug some web application I often stared at the Apache log and say WTF!!
This is what the log might looks like:

The problem comes because every time I go into the web I get hundreds of unrelated log lines, a huge mess!

So one day I thought, could I improve that? My first idea was to add some color using grep like this:

tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log | grep -E "ERROR|" --color

That is nicer because now I can see clearly errors in red.
Could that be better? Maybe yellow warnings?
The answer is yes, grep output can be concatenated to another grep and different colors can be used in every grep. Like this little script: